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Texas
| Music
Kopperl, Bosque
County, Texas
By Steven
Fromholz
(All Rights Reserved)
(The information in this article is the background history upon
which Steven Fromholz's song, Texas Trilogy is based.) |
I
was neither born nor reared in the very small town of Kopperl,
Bosque County, Texas,
but as we Texans say, "Mom 'n 'em were." Kopperl lies on Highway 56
in northeast Bosque County -- seven miles north of Morgan
and 15 miles south of Rio
Vista, just a few miles southeast of the Kimball Bend of the Brazos
River, near Lake Whitney. The town has always been small, but a century
ago it bustled in its own small way. Cotton
was king and the local cattle ranchers shipped their stock to market
via the Santa Fe Railroad, which made a daily stop in Kopperl.
My mother's mother, Hirstine Hughes, lived in a white, wood-frame
house on a corner lot with a white picket fence around it, catty-cornered
from the Church of Christ. In that house she reared her four children
by herself after my grandfather, Steve Hughes, died from injuries
sustained in an accident at the cotton gin. It was in that house,
at my Granny's side, that I learned what love is. By the time my mother
and dad first brought my brother and me to Granny's house in the middle
of the last century, Kopperl had ceased its bustling and was well
into the slow process of dying -- common to little back-road Texas
towns. But to five-year-old Stevie Fromholz, it was a childhood paradise.
The cotton gin had long since closed, and the bank building had a
gaping hole in the front, but George Lane still picked up the mail
at the depot about 2:15 every afternoon, and Granny and I would go
to the post office to see what catalogs had come for us to marvel
over. Every day but Sunday, you could hear the ring, ring of Carlo
Brown's hammer in the blacksmith's shop, and I could sit for hours
in the dark, smelling the brimstone, while Carlo and my Daddy talked
about the world by the fiery glow of the forge. Granny would take
me to Walter and Fannie Day's grocery almost every day for what we
needed for supper, and there was always an ice-cold Dr. Pepper at
Sleepy Hill's General Store or Alleen's Drugstore, just down the street.
Mr. Suggs' pool hall was a safe place for us kids to be, and it was
there my Uncle Pickard taught me to shoot snooker and eight ball and
it was there I heard my first juke-box blaring out Hank Williams singing
"Your Cheatin' Heart."
The caliche streets of Kopperl were the playgrounds for all the kids
in town. We were always barefoot and running through the chalky dust
from house-to-house and adventure-to- adventure. Everyone in town
knew who you were and who you belonged to and who to tell if you were
caught misbehaving (and you were always caught). The streets of Kopperl
were safe because everybody in town was watching after all the children.
To
me, Granny's old house was the heart and soul of the town. From her
I learned my manners, and to always tell the truth and to say my prayers.
I learned to operate the big Motorola radio so we could listen to
"Gangbusters" and "The Grand Old Opry" on Saturday night. I learned
that a cooling breeze always blew through the northeast bedroom. I
learned that we had to go to the root cellar when the sky turned green
and the thunder rumbled and the rain fell in torrents. I learned how
to play "42" and Canasta, and that a "red three" was worth a hundred
points. I learned you can put buttermilk on a sunburn. But most importantly,
I learned what unconditional love is.
I think Granny loved me more than anyone else ever has. She was strong,
kind, loving and, it seemed to me, always a little sad, just like
the town in which she lived almost all her life. She was the very
best of the past and when she died in the early '60s, she, like her
little town, had little hope for the future. They were simply both
worn out by hard living. My Uncle Steve sold Granny's house shortly
after she died, and the new owners tore it down and put a manufactured
home on the lot. Now when I visit my Granny, I go to the Kopperl Cemetery
across the road where the Santa Fe rails used to run, and there she
is, with most all my Mom 'n 'em, resting in peace as the preachers
say. |
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One
day, before too long, I will buy that corner lot and build a white,
wood-frame house with a white picket fence around it, and I will sit
on the porch in my rocking chair and wait for my grandkids to visit
their old Pappy. Now that's resting in peace.
© Steven Fromholz |
(In
his Book of Texas Best (Taylor Publishing, 1988) Kirk Dooly says that
Texas Trilogy is the best song ever written about Texas.)
"Live At Anderson Fair" ›
Live recording of just Steven Fromholz and his guitar and really comes
across with the essence of his music. The only tunes on the CD that
Steven Fromholz didn't write are No. 18 and No. 30. |
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The most definitive
song ever written about small town Texas is "Texas Trilogy" by Steven
Fromholz. It is obviously a three part song about growing up in Kopperl,
Texas. Kopperl was all but forgotten until Fromholz wrote the song
in 1969. He should definitely appear in your list of famous Texas
Musicians - he's written tunes recorded by the greats - Willie Nelson
and Lyle Lovett as example, and has a 40 year career in the Texas
entertainment industry being inducted into the Texas Music Hall of
Fame in 2003. He was born June 8, 1945..... Kindest regards, Angela
Blair, August 21, 2006
See Steven Fromholz Bio
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